This past weekend we attended a workshop hosted by Just Shoot group on facebook and led by Jessica Edwards Photography up in Iowa. It was a 6-hour crash course on everything from business, studio lighting, shooting, etc. It was pretty fantastic and definitely beneficial for us. Continued education, in my opinion, should be a requirement for any photographer (or business person for that matter). A doctor, nurse, attorney, etc… these careers require so many hours of continued education throughout the year to keep a license. Why? Because things change; laws, practices, and so on. It’s almost exactly the same for photography; laws, practices, but also trends, style, software. It’s constantly changing and keeping up by yourself by simply googling it won’t help. We usually attend 2 or so workshops a year and watch about 5-10 hours of education courses that are provided online (on top of any books, magazines, etc we may look into). Afterward a handful of us went to Buffalo Wild Wings to hang out and further network with one another. I love building relationships with other photographers. It’s pretty cool to see what other people are doing. It’s inspiring and helps me push myself even more.
The following morning after an awesome pancake and sausage breakfast by the fire department, we made our way to a country road where we photographed a model in a parachute dress. I don’t know why but I always had this thinking that parachute dresses were specially made dresses, like parachute pants… I didn’t realize the “dress” was an actual parachute! So this was pretty wild to see this in action. When the wind catches the dress, it created this effect, well, sort of like a parachute and with all this fabric in the image in can create for some pretty amazing imagery. Our model, Jade, was fantastic to work with as well. With four photographers photographing her, she rocked the session. I couldn’t ask for a better weekend spent with some pretty amazing people. I had a blast getting to know some people there and definitely hope to hang out with them again soon! This is just another reason I LOVE what I do.
